On the record

A Reply to Don Jeffries

Don has come down from his mountain top to address my backgrounder on the writing of PIPE THE BIMBO IN RED.

This was in a thread on the book at the JFK Education forum started by the retired (or semi-retired?) psychiatrist, Dr W Niederhut. I have pointed out in the past how the good doc loves to remind everyone about the letters after his name and that he obtained them from Harvard.

He did it again in this thread, in reply to a critic. Well, perhaps if I weren't a magna grad of an Ivy League college and Harvard Med School you wouldn't be so frightened, Jonathan.

The good doc is nowhere near as smart as he thinks he is. He knows I would eventually read the thread. And he knows I have taken him to task for his egotism masking neediness in having to constantly remind people of his Harvard credentials.
Which makes this effort nothing but an attempted troll.

The good doc should never play poker.

But back to Jeffries and his post in that thread.

Thanks, W. We put a lot of effort into this book, and it has received very little attention from the research community. This doesn't really surprise me, as the research community ignores many worthwhile books on the subject.

The sour grapes must be hard to swallow. It is not that the book is bad, or badly written or edited. Oh no. Couldn’t be any of that. It is that the best works get ignored.

Okay. Let’s look at that in light of Jeffries’ attempted insult regarding this page. “Fortunately, almost no one reads his Substack”

Far be it for me to claim it is because the best work gets ignored. No. The real reason is, unlike Don, I am not out there begging for a following, or appealing to biases, lowest common denominators, or populism. I aim for facts, regardless of where they fall.

Empire building is not the name of my game. I contribute to a pool of knowledge on the case. That’s all. And the number of times my research has been used in other books shows some measure of success in that endeavor.

As a free speech purist whose civil libertarianism was inspired by Mark Lane, I support the right of everyone to believe what they want. But anyone who has been on these forums for any appreciable amount of time can detect a clear pattern. "Neocon" thought dominates here, and on all JFK forums now.

A free speech advocate who brags that I was kicked off the Education Forum while he was a moderator. And further brags that I have been kicked off other forums. Not quite, though. It was ONE other forum.

The Deep Politics forum - was every bit as hypocritical about free speech as Jeffries. It was set up by a group who split from the JFK Education Forum over “censorship”. I was kicked off that forum for debunking their pet Two Oswald Theory. This is typical of certain groups in the US, Free Speech only means free speech for opinions they agree with. As for the Ed Forum — I was kicked off after a Two Oswald Theorist lodged a complaint over a quip. He had mentioned in one of his rambles, a person named Polly. I replied, Polly want a cracker? His complaint? That “cracker” is a derogatory term in the US, akin to calling someone “white trash”, I assume. In any event, he had to explain why he was “upset” to the British owner of the forum. If a Brit did not know that a cracker is something more than what you put a bit of cheese on, how was I, as an Australian, expected to know? But then again, the owners of the Education Forum claimed to be Free Speech advocates, as well.

As for Jeffries use of “neocon” - he has called me a “Neocon” - among other things - on numerous occasions. This time, he also called the universally respected - and very respectable author - Larry Hancock a “Neocon”. Larry, in his inimitable style - declined to accept the epithet. This prompted a nonsensical reply from the Don.

Let me reply to some comments here. First of all, I think Larry and maybe others misunderstood what I mean by "neocon." I'm not associating anyone here with the kinds of war hawks that took over our foreign policy during the Reagan years. Maybe I need to invent a new term. In this regard, I mean a "neo" belief in conspiracy. Benjamin is expressing it very well here. A tendency to turn away from any notion that powerful forces were involved. Instead, let's keep trotting out anti-Castro Cubans, the Mob, and "rogue" CIA agents. None of those groups could have made the Secret Service stand down, and entire media continue to lie and coverup, 61 years later.

I have no conspiracy theory, "crackpot" or otherwise.

So for years, he has been calling me and others “Neocons” without any explanation, leaving one and all to assume he meant it in the same sense that rest of the world means it.

His sudden explanation is bullshit. He meant it in the sense that everyone else means it. His backtracking now, is that of course he was not calling us all war hawks that took over our foreign policy during the Reagan years. But the term itself is one that also means “Pro-Zionist”. And that is what he is retreating from - because it reveals his anti-Semitism.

I am not a Neocon in the traditional sense, nor in Jeffries’ idiotic definition.

I have certainly never advocated the mob, anti-Castro Cubans or rogue CIA agents as the assassination masterminds. Nor do I promulgate conspiracy theories big or small, or accept every shibboleth that is handed down like Sacred Text from revered conspiracy-mongers of bygone eras. That is what upsets Jeffries the most. The rejection of revered shibboleths.

And unlike Jeffries, I have certainly never implicated (let alone accepted) Israel being involved in the assassination - the real reason for his NEOCON jibe.

Let me make this clear also. I am all for the leaders of Hamas AND Netanyahu being tried for war crimes.

The remainder of his ramblings are not worth spit - just love letters to people who got it wrong in the past, and to BIG CONSPIRACY modelling.

Jeffries is just another showman, another sideshow hustler, another narcissist, another would-be billionaire influencer. But he has neither the talent, the charisma or the ability to ever get close to that. The lazy bastard does not even do his own fucking research.

Note too, that Jeffries does not touch on any of the matters I raised in that original piece. He knows he can’t. He took the lazy bastard’s route because he had no other option. His defense was to attack the messenger.

I will close with this: JFK was shot and killed on Nov 22, 1963. The wrong man was arrested. There was a conspiracy involved beforehand and a cover up afterwards.

All of the details filling in the blanks will be in my revised edition of Lee Harvey Oswald’s Cold War - which will take the story through from where it currently ends in 1959, through to that assassination weekend. It will be renamed REOPEN THE KENNEDY CASES and include new material for pre-1959, as well as a lot of surprises for the remainder of the story.

I will not be relying on, or regurgitating past deeply flawed works on the case. I care too much about facts.

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